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Trump’s Real Problem

Donald Trump has shot to the top of Republican presidential
polls on the strength of his celebrity and his bombastic talk.

Elites on all sides of the political spectrum — liberals,
conservatives, and libertarians — are horrified by his
ranting about Mexican “rapists.” And he may have shot
himself in the foot with his comments about Senator John McCain.
But his poll numbers are still up there.

Some voters like his tough talk about illegal immigration. But I
think more just prefer businessmen to politicians. Nineteen percent
voted for billionaire Ross Perot in 1992, against George Bush and
Bill Clinton, even after Perot temporarily withdrew from the race
on the very odd grounds that the Bush campaign was trying to
disrupt his daughter’s wedding.

Voters sense that businesspeople deal in reality, not rhetoric.
They get things done. That’s why there’s always a
yearning from someone from outside politics to come in and clean up
government.

Unfortunately, just
because a businessman understands making deals and building hotels
doesn’t mean he understands economics.

The website ThinkProgress talked to three Trump voters at the
Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, all of whom emphasized that
point. “I just think we need a business man to run the
country like a business,” Jim Nelle, a small business owner
from Winterset, Iowa, said. David Brown, a farmer and investor from
New Virginia, Iowa, noted, “We’re not broke,
we’re $19 trillion past broke and I believe that he has the
business acumen and wisdom to bring the nation back.” And
Bill Raine of New Hampton put it simply: “He’s a
businessman, he’s not a politician.”

Unfortunately, just because a businessman understands making
deals and building hotels doesn’t mean he understands
economics. Trump is definitely an example of that.

What he’s really offering is a mixture of nationalism and
protectionist economics along with the promise that he’s the
guy, the man on a white horse, who can ride into Washington and fix
the mess. He dismisses politicians, other candidates, and American
negotiators as “stupid people,” “incompetent
people,” and “losers.” He boasts of his wealth
and promises that he would “kick [the] ass” of El
Chapo, the Mexican drug cartel leader who escaped from prison.

Look at his major issues. He’s been barnstorming the
country talking about crime by Mexican immigrants, starting with
his claim in his announcement speech that “they’re
bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re
rapists.” But there’s no evidence for this. Immigrants
are about half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born
Americans (men aged 18-39 in both cases), and as the number of
legal and illegal immigrants rose in the United States between 1990
and 2010, the rates of violent and property crime fell.

You’d think Mr. Trump would be more sympathetic to
immigration. His mother was born in Scotland. His grandfather Trump
was born in Germany. His first wife Ivana was born in
Czechoslovakia, his current wife Melania was born in Yugoslavia. A
genealogist writes on About.com, “Donald Trump epitomizes the
American immigrant experience.”

Mr. Trump also doesn’t much like free trade. He regularly
rails that “China is taking all our jobs.” He laments
that we have “thousands of cars, millions of cars coming
in…They send cars, we send corn.” Which actually sounds
like a pretty good trade.

At his recent FreedomFest speech he complained about call
centers in India, asking, “How can it be that far away and
they save money?”

No real businessman would ask such a question. If it
weren’t cheaper, businesses wouldn’t do it. Labor is
expensive in the United States, cheaper in India and China. So jobs
that can be done in cheaper locations are done there, and Americans
move into higher-value, higher-paying jobs. The average American
wage is now $25 per hour. Employees in Indian call centers make
about $2 per hour, a good wage in India but not one that many
Americans are looking for.

Mr. Trump doesn’t draw on economics to defend his trade
position. It’s all about him, the Donald, just being richer
and smarter than the politicians: “Free trade is terrible.
Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have
stupid people. Our trade deals have been made by incompetent
people.” He, on the other hand, will “make great trade
deals.” But deals have to be good for both sides. He knows
that when he builds a building. But he wants voters to believe that
he can just bludgeon China or Japan into … what? Not sending us
cars? Not letting us outsource low-value labor to low-cost workers?
He’d be hard-pressed to find any professional economist,
Democrat or Republican, to serve in an administration based on such
nonsense.

This “all about me” approach extends to most issues.
The deficit? He’s promised to end the corporate income tax,
cut individual taxes, and cut spending — but without cutting
the biggest programs. How will that work? “I am going to save
Social Security without any cuts. I know where to get the money
from. Nobody else does.”

I could get behind the idea of a businessman instead of a
politician. But not this businessman, who offers only insults,
secret plans, and a promise to kick everybody else’s ass.